nuclear weapons

How did we get here? Why does it appear that we’re on the brink of a war in Asia, one that could involve nuclear weapons? North Korea has had nuclear-weapons capacity for at least 10 years now. Have its recent advances been so dramatic and significant to force the United States to wage a preventive war? No. The crisis we now find ourselves in has been exaggerated and mishandled by the Trump administration to a degree that is deeply worrying and dangerous.

In Washington, there is a conventional wisdom on North Korea that spans both parties and much of elite opinion. It goes roughly like this: North Korea is the world’s most bizarre country, run by a crackpot dictator with a strange haircut. He is unpredictable and irrational and cannot be negotiated with. Eventually this weird and cruel regime will collapse. Meanwhile, the only solution is more and more pressure. But what if the conventional wisdom is wrong?

This week, Vladmir Putin, President of Russia, gave an interview with a pool of international journalists, in which he said that the policy of sanctions towards Cuba only worked to punish the Cubans, and that Obama was on the right path.

During a meeting Tuesday, the Japanese prime minister told the vice president of the United States that he supported the stance taken by the US to keep all options open for countering threats posed by North Korea. But not much can be done without the support of China.

Trump's new international policies are a radical change in the electoral proposals he championed for more than a year. Perhaps the new president is not so far from his predecessor as to the priorities of the United States.